Amateur's Guide: A sit-and-spin for the squirrels keeps feeders safe

Beverly Bethel's bird feeding station now relegates gray squirrels to feeding from the ground, as this one is at the bottom of the photo. Squirrels land on the pop bottles, spin and fall to the ground. (Submitted photo)

We'd put out a call last week to take a peek at unique bird feeding stations in the area.

Beverly Bethel brought in photos of a gem.

She lives about a mile from Vagabond Village in Hubbard County.

Bedeviled by gray squirrels, her setup is clever and effective.

Gray squirrels would walk out to the end of tree branches, wait until the branch slowly dipped down, then drop onto her squirrel baffle. Then they'd slide underneath and gorge themselves.

She cut a tree limb off and they'd still shinny up a pole. Same outcome.

So she strung a wire between two trees and drilled holes in the tops and bottoms of soda bottles, then slid them onto the wire. In the middle hang her two birdfeeders.

The squirrels take a flying leap down to the feeders and usually hit the bottles, which spin wildly, throwing the predators onto the ground.

Send us a note of photo about your feeding station.

And we keep getting reports of grosbeaks, yellow and rose breasted, lots of orioles and hummingbirds. They're all good to hear.